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Alec Klein, an award-winning investigative journalist and Northwestern University professor, presents tips for finding investigative story angles and pitching those story ideas during the free, full-day workshop, "Finding Your Best Investigative Business Story." This training event was hosted by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism and the the SPJ Madison Pro Chapter at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sept. 28, 2013. For more information about free training for business journalists, please visit http://businessjournalism.org. For more tips on how to develop investigative business journalism stories, please visit http://bit.ly/investigativebiz2013.
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Presented by Alec Klein Professor, Medill School of Journalism Northwestern University Madison, Wis., Sept. 28, 2013
About Me
Northwestern University Professor Alec Klein is an award-‐winning investigative business journalist and best-‐selling author, formerly of The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
¡ Father: editor-‐in-‐chief, New York Times magazine
¡ Busy guy ¡ Decided to write for high school paper ¡ Assigned to cover run-‐of-‐the-‐mill burglary
¡ Came home from reporting the story ¡ Wrote draft of story, showed to father ¡ “This is terrible.” ¡ Did you call the school? ¡ Phone book: Mrs. Berman at home
¡ Did you interview the police? ¡ Homework ¡ Subway on a school night ¡ Police station
¡ Father flipped through notes. ¡ Miraculously, found a quote from a school security guard
¡ “Worst thing ever saw” ¡ Another miracle: Had noted she had worked at school for nearly 25 years
¡ Father edited my story. ¡ Translation: He rewrote it. ¡ Lede: “In the worst breakout of burglary in nearly a quarter century…
¡ Page 1 ¡ Hooked
Finding and pitching your best investigative business story
To begin with, you need PHOAM ¡ P:assion ¡ H:ook ¡ O:riginality ¡ A:ccess ¡ M:arket
Image by flickr user marttj
¡ They usually come from beats.
¡ That’s because they’re organic. They arise naturally in the course of reporting.
¡ To wit: Secret bonuses at City Hall
¡ The anonymous tipster on AOL
Image by flickr user MonkeyMike
¡ This is not the same thing as a preconceived notion.
¡ Rather: Consider a set of questions that need answering.
¡ To wit: When cigarettes are under attack, why are cigars being glamorized? (Yachting magazine)
¡ Let’s say you think you’ve hit on a great idea.
¡ How do you check it out to make sure it’s uncharted territory? ¡ Lexis-‐Nexis ¡ Amazon ¡ Google ¡ The overriding question: Has it been done before?
But who has time to pursue investigative business stories, especially when you’re on a busy beat and your editor is breathing down your neck to file early and often?
¡ Get out of the office: kill or be killed. ¡ Cub reporter: worked on vacations—only time the editors couldn’t assign stories
¡ Worked on weekends ¡ Worked after hours, after the proverbial smoke cleared from the daily deadlines
¡ Bottom-‐line: find time
¡ Darwinian approach: only the fittest will get on Page One
¡ In the old days: Only three stories on Page One
¡ Lot of reporters, few A1 slots ¡ Mistake: Walk into your editor’s office with an ill-‐conceived idea.
¡ Such as: I’d like to do an investigation of poverty
¡ Many a times: Bludgeoned in editor’s office
¡ Finally figured out: Need to do some research before entering the torture chamber
¡ But how much research?
¡ About 20 percent ¡ That’s enough to tell you if you’ve got a story or whether you’re going to spin your wheels.
¡ The 20 percent solution: § What’s the story? § A new trend? § A twist on an old idea? § How will you report it, and how long will it take?
¡ Mistake: Never show editors your raw notes.
¡ Made that mistake on AOL
¡ Editor: Don’t get it, nothing here. Go back to work.
¡ Then Enron happened
¡ Editors: What was Alec working on?
¡ This time: I wrote a memo
¡ Set free for a year
¡ Having a year to do an investigative business story sounds better than it is.
¡ You better come up with a great piece. ¡ Can you withstand making no progress for several weeks at a time? § Maybe inbred
¡ Back to the memo
¡ It clarifies the issues. It makes editors see. They can print it. They can ruminate over it. They can forward it by email to their bosses. Then, they can approve it.
¡ Let’s say your editors still say no.
¡ Then what?
¡ Set your own agenda.
¡ The old model: the three-‐part series that took a year to report and runs in December in time for the Pulitzer entries
¡ The new model: write episodically.
¡ WSJ did this: Word was sent out at the beginning of the year—let’s write about death.
¡ The episodic approach, it’s the way of the world: the economy, the industry. Investigative reporting is expensive.
¡ Build on your beat coverage.
¡ Think this way: once a month, craft a great piece of investigative reporting on the same subject.
¡ Over a year, you’ll end up with 12 pieces that amount to a worthy in-‐depth investigation into a single topic.
¡ The Las Vegas Sun, most notably including the reporting of Alexandra Berzon, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for public service, for a series of stories about the high death rate of construction workers on the Las Vegas strip.
¡ Steve Fainaru of The Washington Post, 2008, for international reporting, for his episodic stories about private security contractors
¡ Kevin Helliker and Thomas M. Burton of The Wall Street Journal, 2004, explanatory
reporting, for their episodic stories about aneurysms
¡ Please feel free to contact me at alecklein@gmail.com.
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